Sounds good right? Well, read on at your own risk. (Some Emphasis Added)

Collin,The scientific evidence continues to mount against the global warming scare.Last week even Rachendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, finally acknowledged that there has been no global warming for seventeen years.

Yet President Obama, who wouldn't utter a peep about global warming throughout the long campaign, resurrected it election night and then featured it prominently in his inaugural and state of the union addresses.

The facts are against him, yet President Obama is going all out:

He appointed radical climate change alarmist John Kerry as his new Secretary of State.

He has instructed EPA to impose new, draconian carbon restrictions on power plants certain to raise energy prices and cost jobs.

And he even said in his State of the Union address he’ll stop at nothing to push the Green agenda -- “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations [from global warming], I will.”

CFACT's friends and supporters see right through the President’s radical agenda. And if you’re like us, you may ask yourself, “who could possibly fall for this global warming hooey?”

You're not going to like the answer.

The President's new global warming push is having a powerful impact on public opinion. Polls show, believe it or not, more and more people coming back into the climate fold. It's not like it was at the beginning of the scare, but every backwards nudge to public support is cause for real concern.

So what to do about it? We know we can't rely on the establishment media to get the true facts out. Not without a good hard shove anyway.

But CFACT will not stand idly by. We're taking action.

I'll start with a point of agreement, we can't trust the mainstream media to get out the facts on climate change. According to MediaMatters, the major news networks combined devoted less than 8 minutes TOTAL in 2012 for Sunday news to coverage of climate change. Add to that nightly news and the number rises to only about 65 minutes. That is an appalling lack of coverage for such a major issue.

I also want to thank CFact for citing their source for the graph on their billboard (despite not labeling axis, denoting scale, reference or anything else but two labeled data points). That citation made it so much easier to find out exactly how misleading their chart is.

There are a couple of inconvenient facts about this chart. The data actually shows tenths of a degree above and below the world temperature average of 1961-1990, so the chart already shows a 0.5 C increase in average global temperatures since that time period.

But more importantly, they left out the rest of the HadCRUT4 data from before 1997.

HadCRUT4 data from 1975 on, start of CFACT chart is the dotted line.

Interesting how they only showed the second half of that chart. This chart starts at 1975 because that does actually indicate a change in the trend with statistical significance.

Well would you look at that! Amazing how a little context changes the meaning of a chart isn't it?
So how did the Daily Mail pick the start date of that chart to be 1997? Here's David Rose's explanation.

A Some critics claim this newspaper misled readers by choosing start and end dates that hide the continued warming.

In fact, we looked at the period since 1997 because that’s when the previous warming trend stopped, and our graph ended in August 2012 because that is the last month for which Hadcrut 4 figures were available.

At least he's honest about intentionally cherry picking the data. But he goes on...

In April, the Met Office released figures up to the end of 2010 – an extremely warm year – which meant it was able to say there had been a statistically significant warming trend after 1997, albeit a very small one. However, 2011 and 2012 so far have been much cooler, meaning the trend has disappeared. This may explain why the updated figures were issued last week without a media fanfare

So two years of "much cooler" global temperatures is all it takes to completely negate a 35-100 year trend?

Well let's take that trend from 1975-1997, extrapolate it, and see where we should be right now.

As you can see, the apparent plateau in the data is actually an artifact of the temperature increasing much faster than the trend line between 1996-97. The downtick in temperature rise from 1997-2012 has just now balanced the uptick from 1975-97.

I'm no climate scientist, but that still looks like a rising trend to me.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Ian Hutchinson is participating at a Veritas Forum event here at University of Pennsylvania tomorrow and I've been doing a fair amount of research in preparation for the discussion afterwards.

Hutchinson typically has only one issue that he talks about: "Scientism."

Scientism as Hutchinson defines it is "the belief that the only meaningful knowledge is science." Even though he readily admits that almost no one says that's their position, he still believes it is pervasive in our culture.

But Hutchinson, as an applied physicist, clearly defines science to be only the "hard" natural sciences like Physics and Chemistry. Defined this way, clearly there is knowledge beyond science and believing science can explain everything is absolutely ridiculous.

But whenever Hutchinson gives an example of "scientism" they invariably means something entirely different by "science." Usually when a freethinker or skeptic refers to science, we mean science in a much broader sense: a systematic method of discerning knowledge while accounting for cognitive biases. Psychology, history, and sociology for example (fields at which science is incompetent according to Hutchinson) are systematic academic disciplines that produce experimental results that can be externally verified just like any hard science.

Even then, most skeptics wouldn't say science is the only way of knowing (though we'll often say justifiably that it's the best we've come up with so far).

It seems to me that Hutchinson is setting up a strawman in all sincerity. I accept that he believes scientism is a big problem in our society, but I also think he is completely wrong and attacking a boogieman.

So why is he doing it? What's his motivation? Why continue to push this one issue to the exclusion of all others?

To understand, I think we have to look more broadly at attempts to reconcile faith with science. In general, I've observed five different approaches to this problem that fall roughly on a spectrum.

1. Faith should be discarded outright (Harris, Dawkins, etc)
First is the common view among the New Atheists that in the conflict between science and faith, science should always win. Moreover, since this is always the case and science is getting better and better, why preserve faith at all?2. Science's presumption of naturalism is too restrictive. We should allow supernatural explanations into science (Behe/Intelligent Design)
Proponents of this reconciliation argue that science restricts itself unnecessarily to naturalism and should begin to include supernatural elements. "If the actual answer is beyond the natural world," they reason "why should science be forever forbidden from accepting that?" This is a ploy to capitalize on the popularity and success of science. While they still privately hold to faith as the primary source of their knowledge in these realms, they believe that science would justify their faith if only it where not constrained to what we can observe, test, and falsify.

3. Science and Faith are Non-Overlapping MagisteriA (NOMA/Gould).
Steven J Gould is the most well known popularizer of NOMA, arguing that faith deals in realms science can't touch (the supernatural) and at the same time faith doesn't touch the natural realm where science is king. On this view, questions of faith can't be formulated scientifically so they cannot be in conflict.

4. Shrink science with accusations of scientism and restrict it to the hard sciences (Hutchinson)

People taking this track will hold up science as a paragon of human ingenuity and progress, but only in very narrow specific fields. Meanwhile, they will paint every other field as inaccessible to science. They claim that science has exploded the boundaries of its validity when it tries to address historical claims (like can a dead man come back to life), sociological claims (like is religion purely a product of culture), psychological claims (like is glossolalia meaningless babble).

See the pattern here? Hutchinson is an extreme example of this because he narrows science so much, but many religious scientists make valiant attempts to keep some gap in scientific knowledge available for God to act in the world. Ken Miller for example leaves the randomness of quantum mechanics up to God's will, by which he can control all of reality through subtle undetectable methods.

5. Discard science altogether (Answers in Genesis)

This is the young earth creationist approach of decrying science as a flawed human endeavor and holding up faith and revelation as the only valid path to knowledge.

Except for the first and last approaches that completely reject one or the other, each of these tries to rectify the apparent conflict between faith and empiricism without destroying either. Why has Hutchinson gone with option 4? Because he recognizes that including supernaturalism into science (a la Behe) would destroy it utterly, and as a scientist he doesn't want that. Instead, he wants to leave room for Purpose in a world that could potentially be described in a completely deterministic and purposeless way.

By barring science from touching on any human characteristics such as imagination, judgement, morality, free will, or meaning of life, he intends to leave the door open for God to enter in with those answers.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

I just finished reading the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and had to share my favorite chapter. As it turns out I had come across this as a short story in high school, but I found it even more hauntingly beautiful this time around in the context of the Martian Chronicles.

There Will Come Soft Rains

By: Ray Bradbury

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; umbrellas, raincoats for today. .." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.

Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.

At eight-thirty the eggs were shrivelled and the toast was like stone. An aluminium wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.

Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were a crawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their moustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.

Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted window panes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned, evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the children, the ball - remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.

The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

Twelve noon.

A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.

The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.

For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.

The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized, that only silence was here.

It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odour and the scent of maple syrup.

The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.

Two o'clock, sang a voice.

Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical wind.

Two-fifteen.

The dog was gone.

In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.

Two thirty-five.

Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.

But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.

At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls .

Four-thirty.

The nursery walls glowed.

Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films clocked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched grass, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes. It was the children's hour.

Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.

Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.

Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.

Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling: "Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?" The house was silent.

The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random." Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favourite...

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not oneWill care at last when it is done.

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawnWould scarcely know that we were gone."The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.

At ten o'clock the house began to die.

The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!

"Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!"

The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistolled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.

But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone.

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.

Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes!

The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake.

Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth.

But the fire was clever. It had sent flame outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze shrapnel on the beams.

The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes hung there.

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air.Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed. Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a distant steaming river.... Ten more voices died.

In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in, the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under.

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Decided to go through my email wingnut folder and right on top was this GEM from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC). (Emphasis mine)

Dear Collin,
This year the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases that will also have a lasting impact on the very soul of our nation.

Windsor v. United States could overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that codifies the traditional, historic definition of marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman.

If the Supreme Court does not uphold the constitutionality of these two laws, it will not only lead to the destruction of traditional marriage as we know it, but subvert our American democratic process and force people like you and me to affirm counterfeit matrimony or face punishment by the federal government.

We simply cannot let this happen!

Hollywood, the education establishment, and even the Obama administration are working overtime to indoctrinate you, me, and other Americans into thinking that same-sex "marriage" is exactly the same as heterosexual marriage,

Both my laughter and tears are locked in battle trying to outdo each other. Gay marriage will not lead to the destruction of a single "traditional" marriage. You know what it will lead too? Gay people getting married.

That's it! Full stop! Case closed! Can we get back to work now?

But according to Tony, there's a lot more we should be worried about should the Supreme court overturn DOMA. Lets see if I can help him answer some of his pressing concerns about the future.

And if they succeed, what will ultimately happen to those of us who rely on Scripture as a guide to life and refuse to "change our politically incorrect views?"

Will the federal government now tell pastors what they can and cannot preach from the pulpit so it conforms to approved government speech?

Ummm..no. 1st amendment makes that illegal. Next?

Will pastors who preach against same-sex "marriage" and homosexual behavior be prosecuted for hate speech?

Will churches that refuse to host same-sex "weddings" lose their tax exemptions?

Probably not, which is a crying shame.

And there are other very serious consequences:

The military will have to provide "married" housing to same-sex couples at taxpayer expense.

They damn well better. All the best for our fabulous men and women in uniform right? Also, why are you so concerned about the taxpayer expense of military spouse housing and not, say, the military?

Christian adoption agencies will be forced to place children with same-sex couples or close their doors.

Only if they take government money. If they are discriminating for any reason, the government can have no part in it. Really! It's in that constitution you wave around when we try to take away your guns!

Christian-owned companies and even para-church ministries will be coerced to extend married benefits to same-sex couples.

If by "coerced" you mean dragged kicking and screaming into the next century (in your case probably the 19th) by social progress, then yes you will definitely be coerced. If you mean the government will be interfering with your ministries or private businesses, then no. 1st amendment.

And children who won't affirm the legitimacy of the homosexual "lifestyle" choice will be forced to undergo psychological counseling.

First of all, no they won't go through psychological counseling. If they're bullying kids based on their sexuality they'll be treated the same as any other bully.

Friday, February 15, 2013

In yet another episode of DAMN UNIVERSE YOU SCARY, Russia edition, a giant 11-ton meteor exploded over the Chelyabinsk region. This amazing dashboard cam caught the entire entry vector and the disintegration.

Hundreds are reported to have been injured by the shockwave, which was LOUD:

We were incredibly lucky for several reasons. First, the area is not too densely populated. If this had happened over Moscow, we would be seeing reports of major casualties. Second, our atmosphere disintegrated the mass before it could impact, causing major damage on the ground and potential dust fallout.

And the last reason we were lucky? The whole thing is caught on tape! Unlike the infamous Tunguska event, there is no mystery to be explained.

That hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists though. Russia Today suggested that the meteor was shot down by Russian Air Defense. Look for anomaly hunting videos to be coming out in the next week "proving" the existence of the missile.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

If any of you were Youth for Christ kids like me or any kind of youth group, this should sound a little too familiar. Jessica Misener has posted a list of "33 Ways You Know You Were A Youth Group Kid."

I personally hit 22/33 (with a little stretching). Here are a couple of my favorites.